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HON, C C WHITE 
n Character Sketch. 



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ISAAC CROOK, D.D., LL.D. 



tlON. C. C. WHITE. 



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BY 



ISAAC CROOK, D. D., LL. D. 



ememMATi. o.: 

PRIWTED Bg eURTS & JEMiNI/SGS 
1896. 









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HON. C. C. WHITE. 



ONE needs the skill of a Legh Richmond 
to describe the nature of such a man 
as Charles Clark White. Biography of the 
world's few conspicuous men is less difficult, 
but they belong to the smaller class and come 
not into such close touch with the lives of the 
many. Charles Clark White filled his place 
with singular completeness. 

His personal presence was very pleasing, 
and expressed the real man. Not far from 
six feet in height, his erect, well-proportioned 
form had an air of dignity and ease sug- 
gestive of military- training, without its con- 
straint. His head was shapely and well poised, 
sprinkled a little prematurelj^ with gray hairs. 
The nose was slightly aquiline, the mouth 
well curved, the chin firm, and the eye dark 
blue. Over this face vSwept expressions of 
seriousness, dropping into sadness at times, but 
more often into cheerfulness, which, specially 
among friends and at home, broke out into 
smiles. He had much power to conciliate men, 

3 



4 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

due largely to the manner in which his ster- 
ling worth expressed itself in a way so frank, 
cheerful, and polite as to mark him for a true 
gentleman and one to be trusted. This man- 
ner was so genial as to have led his comrades 
and associates/with no hint of disrCvSpect, to 
call him "Charlie." 

The outward story of his life need not be 
long — true with us all. He was born in 
Sylvania, near Toledo, Ohio, February 24, 
1843, and attended the common schools, also a 
local academ}^ till eighteen 3-ears of age. He 
intended to become a teacher, but instead 
enlisted in the gtli Illinois Cavalry, and for 
three years had the stern schooling of war — 
in camp-life and battle, and for seven months 
in prison at Libby and Belle Isle. Exchanged, 
he returned to his regiment and served out the 
term of his enlistment. In 1864 he settled 
near Raymond, Nebraska, and engaged in 
farming, to support his widowed mother and 
sisters. January 19, 1868, he married a teacher. 
Miss Olive A. Johnson, of Valparaiso. In this 
marriage he found a helper in every excellence 
and a large part of his life succefi-H. 

He was elected treasurer of Lancaster 
County, Nebraska, in 1873, ^^^ ^ second time 
at the end of the first term. During this time 



HON. C. C. WHITE. 5 

his home was in Lincohi. In 1878 he again 
moved to Valparaiso, where he continued to 
live for ten years. 

He was elected senator for Saunders County 
in 1880. During the same year he was hon- 
ored as delegate to the General Conference 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at 
Cincinnati. He moved to Crete, Nebraska, in 
1888, where, as an enterprising leader in the 
milling business, he prospered and became a 
blessing to the city and State. After a brief 
illness, he died September 20, 1895, just as he 
had come to the riper years of full maturit}'. 

His funeral took place from St. Paul's 
Church, Lincoln, where the Nebraska Annual 
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
was in session, both lay and clerical, to the 
former of which he was to have come as a 
delegate. After impressive serv'ices, partici- 
pated in b}^ Conference, Masons, Woodmen, 
trustees, professors, and students of the Ne- 
braska Wesleyan University, and a crowd of 
citizens, he was borne to Wyuka Cemetery, 
where, amid a great throng, and after hun- 
dreds of students had passed by, paying a 
loving floral tribute to his memory, he was 
laid to rest. 

This were a barren story, but for the life 



6 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

it covered and him who lived it. His intimate 
friends, such as saw most of his real life, are 
his greatest admirers. Incidental glimpses, 
when he could not be on guard, showed 
him at his best. The real man grows on one 
by careful observation. It may indicate how 
deeeply and widely rooted was his life, when 
we recall but his official relations. At home 
he was class-leader, president of the Church 
Board of Trustees, leader of the choir, Sunday- 
school superintendent, president of the Young 
Men's Christian Association, president of the 
Board of Education ; and he attended to all 
of them. He had been president of the State 
Millers' Association; was, at his death, presi- 
dent of the Veterans of the 9th Illinois Cavalr^^ 
member of the Board of the Central State 
Sunda3^-school Convention, president of the 
Crete Chautauqua Assembly, and president of 
the Board of Trustees of the Nebraska Wes- 
leyan University. He attended to these several 
duties cheerfully and systematically, without 
hurtful neglect of private business or domestic 
life. Surety he must have been highly endowed 
with executive ability and inspired with great 
philanthrop3\ 

But this officialism was not based on per- 
sonal ambition. He was not an office-seeker, 



HON. C. C. WHITE. 7 

nor did he retreat from the confidence implied 
in a proifered trust. One who knew him inti- 
mately, in a business acquaintance of twenty 
years, says: "The personal pronoun 'I' was 
coUvSpicuous in his case by its absence^ His 
modest readiness to serve was based on a 
feeling of comprehensive brotherhood. He 
was a Woodman, a Mason, an Oddfellow, a 
Union vSoldier, generous to Confederates; a 
party man appreciating the best in the oppo- 
sition, and open-minded to new and better 
views. He was a Methodist theoretical^ and 
practically; but many of his vSweetest, most 
sacred fellowships were in the Churches differ- 
ing from his own most radically. His love 
was too large for denominational fences. His 
correspondence and the letters of S5'mpathy 
written after his death, reveal a widespread feel- 
ing of esteem, amounting, as one says, " to a 
sentiment akin to reverence." These tribute- 
bearing letters are from clergymen, educators, 
lawyers, phj^sicians, merchants, millers, grain- 
dealers, pastors of congregations, in and out of 
his State, from East and West, North and South. 
But the most significant of all come from the 
unfortunate. Little wonder, when we remem- 
ber that he once said to his wife: "How can I 
sleep whenlj there is under our roof a broken 



« A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

heart 1" It was the heart-break of a hired girl. 
Or he would say: "I must at least go and 
shake hands with the people in that prairie 
schooner and speak an encouraging word." Or 
when a transient hired man would be over- 
come with drink, he would try the man again, 
saying: "Were I in his place I might have 
done no better." One such man was under 
his care when he died; and a poor Bohemian 
woman, on hearing of his death, sat down in 
the street crying, as she said, " I 've lost the 
best friend I had in the world." One closest 
to him in his office says, "There was scarcely 
a day without his giving relief privately;" 
nor was he harsh in the manner of doing it. 
Another of his greatest admirers, a business 
partner, confesses to being often tried by the 
belief " Mr. White was imposed upon by 
charity-seekers." 

But whence came this spirit? And who 
said : " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of 
these, ye did it unto me?" A clue to his 
business honor and kindness, which won for 
him the name " Miller PhilanthropivSt," may be 
seen in the fact that there was found written 
as a motto on his desk when county treasurer, 
and also in his books when miller, " Better is 
a little with righteousness than great revenues 



HON. C. C. WHITE. 9 

without right." Many a man had CvScaped dis- 
honor for himself and family by placing this 
old-fashioned motto in sight and obeying it. 
"A tree is known by its fruits ;" and those of 
Bi]jle righteousness are good when they con- 
trol the ledger and the life. Take one instance 
of his honesty : A man sent one penny too 
much for taxes, and White returned the money 
in a one-cent stamp. " Faithful in little, faith- 
ful in much." 

His generosity was both natural and ac- 
quired. His religion and benevolence came 
easier than wnth some men. There are those 
who pass through a death to reach either, and 
develop poorly. White began early and de- 
veloped grandly. It was a saying with him : 
" Ivife is not worth living but to do good." On 
his birthday anniversary, which occurred on a 
Sabbath, the writer said to him, "Your busi- 
ness prospects are good; you could easily 
acquire great wealth by devoting 3'ourself en- 
tirely to business." He fairly interrupted the 
remark, saying, "It would not be worth the 
attainment." He then outlined his purpose to 
devote steadily each year from his resources to 
the cause of education, and summed up all in 
declaring his purpose to make money to take 
care of his family, his credit, and help the 



lO A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

cause of God. A characteristic illustration 
may be given of this care for others when he 
was a prisoner at Belle Isle. He was selected 
as a clerk for the distribution of rations, and 
as such was favored with a double portion for 
himself. In spite of scarcity and hunger he 
shared with those not so fortunate. In this 
he was detected and the extra ration was 
taken from him. At Chicago during the Co- 
lumbian Exposition he took his family to see 
"Old Libby " there on exhibition, and pointed 
out the spot where he lay while prisoner. 
There he had shared his narrow blanket with 
two others. Little wonder that the bo3\s in 
ragged blue called him " Charlie," and do so 
still, as their hair turns white and their ranks 
grow thin ! 

The educational turn of his generosity is 
remarkable. His own schooling was checked, 
as was that of so manj^ others, by the war. 
But he was a good miscellaneous reader and 
kept in touch with most of the better class of 
magazines, and sometimes read a choice book. 
In this his wisdom w^as like that of some other 
busy men whom the writer recalls — one a rail- 
road man, whose early education was meager, 
but to whose family reading-room it is a pleas- 
ure for the scholar to resort. Another, a con- 



HON. C. C. WHITE. II 

gressman, around whom unusual storms have 
swept for years at Washington, has quietly 
recited to a teacher in French, in Spanish, and 
in Italian. Thus he stood the storms all the 
better. Members of the British Parliament are 
wonderful students and scholars outside of 
politics. From a similar spirit sprang Mr. 
White's ambition to keep enlarging his own 
mental horizon, and to push forward the edu- 
cational interests of which he said, " This 
must be God's work if he has any in this 
luorld.'' 

Would that some of the men and women 
he has helped to an education could pay 
their tribute to his memory ! One of them, 
modestly and in simple, graphic style, melted 
all hearts on the day of burial, as he spoke of 
the homeless boy and of the kindness that shel- 
tered, encouraged and started him on his way 
to hope, self-respect, development, and to the 
ministry. Man\^ others could reveal what 
must await the time when the question is 
raised, " When saw we thee sick, and minivS- 
tered unto thee?" 

To mau}^ personall}^ and to the priceless 
work of the university, that funeral-day was 
one of the saddest of life. As to the Austrians 
at Austerlitz, the going down of the sun ended 



12 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

SO much of hope after such hard fighting . . . 
our ally was gone ! 

He was a pioneer in Nebraska. This 
meant hardships and self-sacrifice. After his 
marriage he lived with his bride in a home 
which he had builded with great labor; there 
were several neighbors with families, but no 
school or public funds. He secured a few 
slabs from a portable sawmill, cut holes in 
them, and drove in pegs for legs. These 
rough benches were put in one of the rooms 
of his simple home. There he collected his 
neighbors' children, and his wife taught them. 
The labor and privation of such benevolent 
work can be appreciated by those who have 
been pioneers, and by such as at that time re- 
ceived a start in education, among them the 
Worley brothers, one now a useful educator in 
Kansas, the other a self-sacrificing missionary 
in China. The father of these boys brought 
them eight miles each Monday morning ; Mrs. 
White kept and taught them until Frida}^ 
evening. Such was Mr. White's enthusiasm 
in the service of education, and ever after he 
was on educational boards from " district 
school" to the university. 

When he returned from the war he bought 
a team and worked his mother's homestead, 



HON. C. C. WHITE. I3 

thus supporting his mother and sisters. He 
rose early to travel miles to market, often eat- 
ing his lunch, already frozen, and one time 
losing his entire load of salt in the stream. 
But his courage did not dissolve with the 
salt. Once a prairie fire leaped the stream 
and swept away his house and thousands of 
dollars' worth of machinery and tools for farm- 
ing, he and his family only escaping. Yet 
under all these adversities he maintained his 
integrity and became a wealthy man. 

There is something still deeper than these 
things, his purity of mind. This was seen in 
his speech. It is said that an ofiicer was 
about to tell a story in General Grant's pres- 
ence, but looking around inquired, "Are there 
any ladies present?" Grant said, "No, but there 
are gentlemen^ The spirit of that reply was 
the mental habit with White. A business 
partner of long intimacy testifies that he 
never heard from him a word unfit to be 
spoken in the presence of his wife and daugh- 
ters. He did not speak evil of his neighbors. 
He said to his pastor, " I can not bear to hear 
ill of any one." To another, when discussing 
political intrigue and place-seeking, " I can 
not believe men are so bad ; if they are, I do 
not want to know it." 



14 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

His gentleness did not mean weakness. 
His was not the pliability of the willow, but 
of the palm, which bends to the zephyr, yet 
withstands the simoon. Men who undertook 
to dislodge him from a right position by bribes 
or threats, found cause for humiliation and 
shame. That mild blue eye could flash fire, 
and that kind face be as set as a helmet of 
steel. Though generous in his interpretation 
of men's motives, he read character accurately. 
I/ike the Master, he condemned and forgave 
the sins of weakness for which men were 
sorry, but his wrath was unsparing towards 
hypocrisy. 

Nor was he always a placid soul. His mind 
often swept out into the awful mysteries of law 
and Providence ; of evil and destiny. Amid 
the strain of responsibility caused by drought 
and disaster, he was seen under the juniper- 
tree more than once. Souls as strong as his 
grow by suffering. Much of his ability to 
carry the sorrows of others came of this. 

Who shall lift the veil of the life at home ? 
His home-coming, how it was greeted, and how 
gladsome, with story and song, as his clear 
voice blended with those of his daughters at 
the piano, or led at the altar of prayer ! What 
home had so many and so welcome guests? 



HON. C. C. WHITE. 15 

Would there were more such in the world ! 
None can be so happy which does not in- 
crease its own brightness by hospitality. The 
atmosphere about this one, so filled with po- 
liteness and kindness, spoke more than words. 
It must have been such which attracted so 
often the Man of Galilee to the home at 
Bethany. Yet even with Mr. White such a 
home and such a charming hospitality would 
have been impossible but for the model home- 
keeper. Though the circle is now broken and 
the place changed, the atmosphere of "Home, 
sweet home," remains to those he left. 

His letters to his young daughters contain 
choice sentiments. In one he laments with 
them over the death of "Don Pedro," the dog, 
saying: "I too am very sorry and much dis- 
tressed over the death of Don Pedro. . . . 
Kiss Grace and Carol for me, and tell them 
that papa feels like cr3dng with them." In 
another, he thanks the child for her kind 
wishes, and says, "The lyord does not always 
reward us with what we call prosperity." 
Again, "Nothing takes the place of goodness, 
and nothing is so beautiful." In a letter from 
the South: "This is the time of year when the 
'colored man and brother' is 'yanking' his 
one mule around by a rope-line and scratch- 



1 6 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

ing up the ground a little, pretending to 
plow. We would call it poor plowing, but it 
suits them. They raise cotton mainly, but 
some of them raise ' Cain.' " To his wife, 
from Toledo, O., near life's close: "I want to 
know whether you approve my going to Eu- 
rope if I can not leave New York before 
July 31st, which would mean that I could not 
return before the first week in September. I 
hardly know how to be away from you and 
the girls so long. I find myself so home- 
sick to see you." "Now, darling wifie, you 
must take such measures, regardless of ex- 
pense, as will secure you comfort and rest." 
"Our drought is yet unbroken. A general 
feeling of discouragement exists, and old set- 
tlers say the coming winter will be the hardest 
one ever seen in Nebraska. But you will say 
I am croaking." 

To Ivillian: "I hope you will always make 
it a point to do well whatever you undertake 
to do. I am quite well, but homesick to see 
my family — mother and daughters. I am 
standing it first-rate because I know it is so 
much better that your mother should be there 
than here." 

In nothing does a man's quality show so 



HON. C. C. WHITE. 1? 

well as in home discipline. His law was love, 
but love with authority. Persistent in bring- 
ing each child to obey the right, it was so 
gently done as to weaken nothing in the child's 
nature but evil. He played on conscience, di- 
rected the will, and led through the judgment 
and affections. On one occasion the little 
three years old had ruthlessly used the scis- 
sors on a good table-cover. When papa re- 
turned, one said, " Carol has done a naughty 
thing." Mr. White smilingly said, " Will my 
little daughter tell papa what she has done?" 
For fully twenty minutes he pleasantly, 3^et 
persistently, asked the child the same ques- 
tion until, penitent, she took his hand and 
led him to the table. He took her in his 
arms, saying, "Papa is so sorry." So seldom 
did he use physical discipline, that on one 
rare occasion the slightest touch brought from 
the astonished child the remonstrance, "Pun- 
ishment belongs to mamma!" Glancing into 
the sacred precincts of the last will and testa- 
ment we find him saying, " My beloved wife, 
to whom I owe my prosperity, and whom I re- 
gard as my equal partner . . ." But we 
must withdraw from that sacred place, know- 
ing enough to be sure it is holy. 



1 8 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

lyOve is the "greatest," for it is both gen- 
tlest and firmest. It is the source of all spir- 
itual sunshine in heart and home, in life and 
learning. Well might George Romanes quote 
as he returns from the darkness of agnostic 
wanderings toward the Light of the World : 

" The night has a thousand eyes, 
And the day but one ; 
Yet the light of the whole world dies 
With the setting sun. 

The mind has a thousand eyes. 

And the heart but one ; 
Yet the light of the whole life dies 

When love is done." 

Without this, such a man as White can not be 
explained. 

Will any stop here without going to the yet 
deeper source of this character? He would 
protest that only his goodness has been dwelt 
upon, and that he too was but a sinful, blunder- 
ing man. This is true, yet he found the remedy 
for sin. He had, like many a soldier, deferred 
his enlistment in divine service till after the 
close of the war, and until after marriage 
came. Though impelled by reason and con- 
science, and urged by duty as head of a fam- 
ily, and led by an affectionate wife, the step 



HON. C. C. WHITE. 1 9 

so honestly and resolutely taken required a 
higher type of courage than a cavalry charge 
upon a battery' of cannon, as many a veteran 
can testif3^ How sad to see the honored hero 
of many a battle-field, who never faltered be- 
fore shot and steel, quail before his duty here, 
though surrounded by home friends, and im- 
pelled by eternal and divine motives ! The 
great honor of being the spiritual guide of 
Mr. White and his wife, at this critical time, 
fell to Rev. H. T. Davis, D. D. First, he was 
their guest at Raymond, and, like sensible 
people, they talked frankly on religion. In a 
year Davis returned as presiding elder. Be- 
fore he came Mr. White said, "Wife, I fear I 
can't hold out much longer against Elder 
Davis's preaching." " I also feel that way," 
she said. After the sermon, on the following 
Sabbath night, invitation was given for in- 
quirers to go forward for prayer. His wife 
said, " Let us go." He replied, " Do you wish 
to?" "Yes." "All right." And to that hum- 
ble school-house altar they went, and again were 
united in a holier bond than ever. Here, as 
often, the wife was the leader, while he was a 
willing follower and companion. She soon 
found peace that floweth as a river. He held 



20 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 

resolutely on, going three nights in succession, 
when he too entered into peace, and said, 
" Glory, glory, hallelujah !" Now, after twenty- 
three years of service, he is with the in- 
numerable company whose hallelujahs never 
end. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



THE following words, substantially as they 
were spoken by Rev. James Mailley at the 
funeral, are so characteristic that they, with 
a few quotations from letters, form a suitable 
appendix : 

" I have lost ray friend. Many tongues, I 
know, will frame these words, when it is learned 
that C. C. White has passed away. But to me it 
means very much. Many of you, especially of 
the members of the Nebraska Conference, know 
what were the relations that existed between us ; 
some of you know what he was to me, what was 
the influence of his life upon mine. It is of this 
that I would speak. 

"You will hear much of him as a public bene- 
factor ; and there is much to tell, more than will 
ever be told. I may be pardoned for dwelling for 
the short time allotted me, upon what this prince 
of Methodism was to me. 

" Fifteen years have gone since I first met 
Brother White. He then lived in Valparaiso. His 
home was the large frame house on the hill over- 
looking the village ; my home was nowhere in 
all the wide world. He took me to his home in 

23 



24 APPENDIX. 

the dusk of one Saturday evening. I had never 
before been the guest of such a home, and to my 
uncultured eyes it was a veritable wonderland of 
plenty and comfort. Rough and uncouth, I gazed 
about me — at the carpet on the floor, at the pic- 
tures on the walls, at the books in the book-case — 
and was charmed. But the greatest charm of all 
I found in the people who called this place 
'home.' I thought how small a price would be 
the whole world to pay for the love and friend- 
ship of such people as these ; but as I compared 
myself with them, it seemed impossible that they 
should care for such a one as I. I remember 
wishing they Z£^oz(j/^likeme, and wishing that such 
a home as that could be mine. 

"As the dusk fell deeper on the world, I sat 
by the east window and longed for some sign 
from some member of that family telling me 
that I was a little more to them than a stranger 
stopping for a night. The sign came ; it came 
from the baby, from Baby Lillian. She was ill 
and fretful and wakeful. I took her to me ; she 
settled down in my arms, nestled her little head 
against my rough bosom, and — fell asleep. Friends, 
from that hour through all these fifteen years, 
that home has been my home ; and from the 
kingly soul whom God has taken to himself, 
and from the other members of this family cir- 
cle, there have come to me many — O so many! — 
proofs of an affection of which I have been all 
unworthy. Many times during these years I 



FUNERAL DISCOURSE. 25 

must have sorely tried his patience, but I have 
never turned to him in vain. Some of you know 
that it was he who first took me by the hand and 
led me out of that dark labyrinth of discourage- 
ment and ignorance in which years of homeless 
wandering and neglect had left me ; who first put 
into my hands the money that made it possible 
for me to see and catch something of the spirit 
of that center of the cultured Methodism of the 
West, Evanston. 

"I am in the ministry to-day, and in the Meth- 
odist ministry, because, at the critical period of 
my life, I met C. C. White. Years ago I used to 
look at him and ask God to make me as noble 
and as good a man as he was. Last Friday after- 
noon I stood beside his bier, and, looking into his 
dear, dead face, I breathed again that old prayer, 
and dedicated myself anew to the work for which 
he had given his best thought— the spread of 
Christ's kingdom in the world. 

"He was a father to me. In spite of natural 
weakness; in spite of the follies growing out of 
the soil of an untrained boyhood ; in spite of ec- 
centricities that must have jarred roughly upon a 
man of such fine sensibility, of such unswerying 
moral integrity, of such exalted spiritual ideals, — 
in spite of all this, and much more, C. C. White 
has been to me more than a friend : he has been 
a father ; and as such I shall revere his name and 
memory so long as my life shall last. And we 
shall meet again, — O, we shall meet again !" 



FROM LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE. 



" Surely he was a prince in Israel, and I am 
sure that the memory of his noble life will lead 
very many to higher ideals and better living. I 
know I owe more to you and to him than to all 
the rest of the world." M. S., Nebraska. 

" What a friend in a thousand ! We have 
never found his equal anywhere we have been. 
He was a prince among men." 

H. McR. H., Washington, D. C. 

"We have known him so long and so well; 
such a noble and generous man !" 

M. J. M., Nebraska. 

" In the death of Mr. White we feel that we 
have lost a friend, as we considered him one of 
the best among the comrades. We very much 
enjoyed his talks at our last reunion at Cambridge." 

^ J. A. T. AND Famii^y, Illinois. 

" He was an ideal man ; a friend to all. His 
kind face was an inspiration to all. But he was 
more and did more than most of men. He lived 
out his number of days quickly, doing good, 
making himself useful." Mrs. Van Dooze;r. 
26 



LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE, ^7 

" Why should God take one so noble, and one 
who did so much good in this world for God and 
humanity ?" Mrs. Guii.d. 

" Few are the men so universally loved, as well 
as respected; and rare are those of whom it 
can be truthfully said, ' Servant of God, well 
done.' " R. H., Nebraska. 

" I have never known his name coupled with 
aught but goodness." A. A. A., Nebraska. 

" It is comfort to you that your husband was 
so beloved by all who knew him, not only for his 
gentlemanly and Christian conduct, but also for 
the kind, generous deeds his great heart was 
ever prompting him to do. But the greater com- 
fort is that he so lived that when his last summons 
came he was ready to hear the glad welcome, 
* Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you before the foundation of 
the world.' " Mrs. Iv. Iv. A., Nebraska. 

"Mr. Ellenwood said, when he came home 
from the funeral he felt so lonely ; he had always 
felt free to talk with Mr. White about everything 
as he could with no one else. The people of 
University Place feel that they have lost their 
best friend. We do all appreciate what he did 
for the university, and it was so courageous for 
him to take every little affair of the university 
so to his heart with all his other cares. It gave 
us more courage." C. E. 



28 APPENDIX. 

" Dear Brother White ! How often I had held 
him up to my friends as the model president of a 
Board of Trustees, and as a worthy example of a 
■well-rounded gentleman ! Thus I have spoken to 
friends both in and out of the State, and thus will 
he evermore live in my memory." T. A. A. 

" Dear Mrs. White, — Save one who is like him, 
I loved your husband better than any man on 
earth, more indeed than 1 realized until now 
he is gone. It was not for his Christianity, nor 
entirely for his generous deeds. ... It was 
for his character and true manhood. I knew him 
better than he thought, and loved him because he 
was what I would like my boys to be. While 
men talked yesterday morning of many virtues 
which during his life were apparent to all, the 
virtue to me the best of all, the one whose pos- 
session can be only absolutely known by closest 
friends, the rarest virtue in a man, was a clear 
name and pure heart. I thought of a promise 
which is neither promiscuous nor qualified, 
* Blessed are the pure in heart,' etc." I. H. H. 

** I loved him as an ideally perfect man." 

S. E. Hermance. 

" It was a pleasure to have done some busi- 
ness with him. His frank, open, manly way of 
putting every proposition won our esteem and 
confidence at once. Upon entering our office the 
second time, I so well remember his salutation, 



LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE. ^9 

' Well, boys, I was up in Atlanta, so near that I 
could not pass you without calling, although I 
expect no business.' " 

W. G. SoivOMAN & McRae, Macon, Ga. 

" Of my old comrade in prison pens from 
Atlanta, Ga,, to Libby and Belle Isle, well ac- 
quainted with his sterling integrity." 

C. M. WiTHSTRUK, Nebraska. 

"Acquaintance for ten years ; for his unfeigned 
piety, his inflexible fidelity, and his noble instincts 
of justice, my love amounts to almost venera- 
tion." J. J. W. 

" I think it is given to few persons to be such 
a benediction to their fellow-men and such a 
help to their race as was he. . . . Few men 
would be so greatly missed and so generally 
mourned in this part of Nebraska. . . . His 
life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in 
him that nature might stand up and say to all the 
world, 'This was a man.* " J. M. B. 



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